Re: Motion TRACKS versus FCP X Trackless (now OT: organization in FCPX vs FCP7)

[Walter Soyka] "I know you've been working with FCPX for a while now. Can you think of another everyday example that was dramatically easier (organizationally) in FCPX which would have been nightmarishly difficult in FCP7? I believe that FCPX has great advantages here in theory, but I'm curious as to what they are in practice."

A month ago. Corporate client. Two days of field interviews in San Diego. Dozens of subjects discussed. Everything gets imported into X. Linda sits and goes through things in X doing nothing but labeling all the total dreck as "Rejected." Hide rejected. Then one-step drag everything else to a new storyline. Slap the timecode filter on it and output a window dub for the client. Done.

The look it over and want a New Project. A 2 minute piece on a single topic that was discussed in multiple places in the overall sessions.

Since we can "hide rejected" we no longer have to audition anything but the "first round selects" - we go through those. Decide to keep it simple. Whenever we hear something "on topic" we keyword it as Favorite.

Yeilds 40 or so clips out of 200 plus.- WAY too long. We put them in a bin, Drop a "subject" tag on all of them to keep our choices separated. strip off the "favorites" tag and replace it with "Selects" (in case we want to use "Favorites" again for something else from the dashboard.

We decide to "quality assess" the clips using the simplest possible rating system - numbers 1 to 5, 5 being best. We re-assess the group. (remember we don't even HAVE a timeline at this point. Everything is being done in the Event Browser. We zero tag a bunch of clips as duplications with better alternatives.

The Event Library now shows us we have 6 clips tagged "4" and 11 clips tagged "3" and zero in any other category! (you never know how an arbitrary rating system will work in advance, do you?)

Click on our tag "4" in the Event Library (SNAP - all the 4's are displayed as pre-trimmed clips)- drag them all into a new Storyline (they are already come in "rough edited because we trimmed them during the original clip selection process!) At a glance I can see all the best stuff (the 4s) add up to 1:32. To fill the 2 minute request, we know we need another 30 seconds or so. We call up the 3's and listen to them.

In a minute 3 of them that say something different and gets us to around 2 minutes.

We re-arrange them for a couple of minutes (that magnetic thing!) until we're happy. I tweak beginnings and ends. Then decide I want the VO to lead the visuals in the transitions between the clips. So the precision editor lets me do "L cuts" so the VO change leads the visual change in all instances.

Title and Closing slate and the edit is done. The total time is completely dependent on how much time you spend discussing and deciding and comparing, but the actual editing operations have been kinda trivial. At each stage, I kept the benefits of the time and effort I'd put in during the stage prior.

The point is that the Event Browser was an integral part of managing, rating, rough trimming, assessing and assembling my story before I ever opened up a timeline.

Now I suppose you could do all of that in Legacy using color tags, bins, and such - so I'm not saying anything here is "impossible" in what we had before.

I'm saying its all easy, practical and FAST do do the above in X. And in fact the interface encourages the tagging and sorting by elevating tagging to equal prominence in the workflow of X, where in Legacy you would have been working in "bins" that many people think of merely as "dumb storage" constructs - rightfully or not.

I presume I'll use "search, sort and find" every time I open X because it's a huge persistent part of the interface by design.

To me it's elevating selection and clip judgment functions to near equivalency with timeline arrangement functions by design.

Something I think it should be in the new searchable world.

Sorry to go on so long. But that's a quick example of a typical X workflow I'm finding very valuable these days.

It also kicks butt to know the next time that client asks me to re-cut stuff from that event - since Events are persistent storage - I can setup as many projects as I like, and all the tagging, trimming and similar work I did last week will be waiting for me across all projects I choose to link to that event.

So I feel like I'm "building a system" rather than just "working an edit" when I use X.

I guess that's it in a nutshell.

FWIW.

"Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions."-Justice O'Connor